Into the Grey
by Tellurium
Summary: The Dalish are a people; a person is a person. No one is made merely of custom and principle, but of joys, lessons, heartbreak — spirit, flesh and blood. An anthology of a life, and how a person becomes the salvation of a people.


**Note:** Decided to put this out before Dragon Age III is upon us, in case canon lore unhinges the "credibility" of my imaginings, after all.

In this chapter, please be warned of some graphic (only marginally so) description of childbirth and girly parts.

Cover art: _Eye'_ by miyak0o on deviantart.

**Disclaimer:** The world and characters of Dragon Age belong to Bioware, David Gaider, etc. You know the drill. My only claim is to naming Mahariel's parents and filling in the gaps of the Dalish backstory, including the True Name/Cloak Name concept.

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The wind through the trees sounded like a chorus, fluting between gaps in the branches, joined by the crescendo of tossing leaves. A wearied mother heard it all and was glad.

Dappled in the shadow of a hunched oak lay the mother and her newborn babe, huddled in the earth from prying eyes. They were very much alone—besides their woodland neighbors. A passing shrew sniffed about on hind legs, wondering at the scent of blood. A robin blared an alarm from his perch, piqued by the agonized moaning that had been piercing the wood all day.

The mother spat a willow root from her mouth, sawed down by shaking teeth. She cocked her head to the side. A quivering ear perked up to listen. The hitching cries of the child beneath her chin did little to drown out the din of the wind, and over the whole cacophony did she speak.

"Hush, little one," she soothed, sponging the tiny, blotched stomach with furs. Her hand shook. "The hunt is won by those who listen, and speak only once the arrow strikes true."

For a moment, the child's keening wavered, promptly spilling over into formidable wails. The mother laughed. "Now I know you're like your father, who never listened."

The mention of a father seemed to quiet the pair, as the mother swaddled the babe in soft hare skins. They settled further into the embrace of raised roots as though to burrow entirely into the wood. The mother stared into the line of the trees—past the clearing, past the forest and further, gaze touching so far an object that it might have reached back in time. The infant, too (with its unseeing eyes), beheld something above its mother's face, beyond the foliage overhead as tiny arms flailed towards the sky.

Both failed to notice the panting and pounding of one approaching the clearing. A dark haired elf skidded into the open space, clutching at her heart over a disheveled tunic.

"_Ëonna_."

The newcomer rushed over with a look wavering between great relief and chastisement. All expression left her altogether once she crossed fully into the shade and looked before her clearly.

Only then did Ëonna rouse from the fog of memory to smile at the confounded woman. Her green eyes twinkled. "Hello, Ashalle," she greeted.

Ashalle's gaze darted between the new mother's face, laden arms, and what showed of her bloodied legs, folded up beneath a swathe of fur. She dropped to her knees by Ëonna's waist and proceeded to strip her of the soaked furs, spreading the mother's legs to examine her loins. The infant began to cry once more.

Ëonna bit back a quip regarding her friend's clinical forwardness. She raised an amused brow, nonetheless. It soberly sank back down at the sight of tear tracks on a trembling chin, though Ashalle tried hard to avert her face.

She left Ëonna's side once to scour about the ground. She brought back a clutch of bright orange calendulas, chewing them as she resumed her place. She tore off the sleeves of her tunic, then doused them with water from a bladder. She began cleaning up Ëonna's legs and nether regions.

Ëonna yelped. "That's cold."

Ashalle didn't answer, and Ëonna thought her comment easily described her friend's demeanour, as well. Ashalle was angry. Ëonna focused her attention on the squealing infant (_My daughter_, she amended), rocking her lightly to distract them both.

After some time, Ashalle took a stretch of torn linen and spat onto it, applying the poultice and bandage to Ëonna's crotch and wrapping the length of it about her hips, with some help from the patient herself. She scrutinized Ëonna's belly and gently prodded in a pattern of areas only apparent to her. She helped Ëonna reposition, shoving dirt over the afterbirth and severed cord. Then, she covered both mother and child with dry linen, folded once over, and tucked the ends under cold feet. Finally, Ashalle spoke.

"There is some tearing; it will hurt for near a fortnight," she said, in her Healer's business-like way, as she wiped her fingers clean. "I may have to stitch you in camp; I do not have anything right now. Pour water down the groin when you pass urine to ease the sting, or crouch into a running stream. No hunting until it heals—"

"Creators, I'll have to spend a whole fortnight with this needy one?" said Ëonna.

"—I will also," Ashalle breezed over the interruption, "brew you a tincture to soften your stool—"

"Dear Mythal."

"—I will ask Ilen to craft a ringed seat for you—"

"Well, he'd love the chance to measure my bottom."

"—and no coupling."

To this, Ëonna austerely raised a brow, bouncing the squawking thing in her arms. She shrugged. "It was the 'coupling' that brought me into this in the first place. I'd say I can be rid of it altogether."

(As it turned out, Ashalle had seen none of her advice followed in the next weeks. Ëonna did not even stay a day, much less a fortnight.)

Ashalle wound down from her recital to fix a look at her friend—or whom she thought was a friend, before this morning—who was running a thumb down the bridge of the babe's nose. It was a trick used distinctly to calm nervous halla. The little face remained pinched, red, and upset. She sighed.

"It is hungry. You should feed it."

Ëonna looked up with a quirk of a smile, repositioning the child to the crook of her elbow and easing down one side of her shirt. She guided the child's mouth to a nipple. She paused only to regard Ashalle and tease: "I suppose you've seen all that is to see. I've nary a shred of dignity left."

Both women simply watched in the next moments as the child spiritedly suckled at this new source of food. Had they listened closely, they would have heard shouts in the distance in the search for a missing mother. But both women were drained—be it of energy, emotion, or spirit—and as they stared, they burrowed into their own thoughts.

Ëonna stirred with a misty smile. "She," she said.

"What?"

"'_She _is hungry. I should feed _her_.' She," Ëonna repeated, snorting. "What a little pig she is, too—look. No manners at all. Just like her mother."

She ran the pads of her fingers along the babe's crown, feeling for the subtle bumps on the bare head. "I just… I wish I could see her hair. I hope she has mine. Her father's wiry mass won't do."

(As it turned out, Ëonna would have her wish. The girl had copper-gold tresses, bushy and wild in her youth—like a fox coat, many would tease—but as sunset on lakewater when she grew, just like her mother's.)

She winced at the sensation of feeding, but continued. "Have you seen her eyes, Ashalle? Grey as a winter storm—_his _eyes. She can have that, and she can have his personality, too. Do you think the Sabrae can handle another Teren?"

Ëonna did not wait for answers, but Ashalle didn't think she would, either. "Her magic might start to show—if she has it—at around three summers… Teren would want her _not_ to have them, though I can't think why. I so loved his magic.

"I can see her becoming a heartbreaker, this one. She'd lack the conceit for it, too, but she'll be bullheaded and dense. It's in the forehead," she laughed, light as a bell. "I pity the boys. Aelwen's youngest… what did they name him, again? Something dainty. Tam… Tamlen—that's it. Better keep an eye out for that runt.

"I have a feeling she'll take up the hunt in a flash." Her grin was feral, canines flashing. "She'll get to where she has to—definitely bullied her way out today, I can tell you. She will take what she wants, but not in a straightforward, honest sort of way. She'll be smart, patient. She'll be a hunter."

Ëonna paused overlong. Ashalle was enchanted by the pace mother and child had now set for themselves, by the natural-ness that suffused them in the calm of a summer's afternoon. Fleetingly, she thought of how it would be to have _this_ for herself.

"But she will have her father's mercy," Ëonna continued slowly, as if caught in a dream. "A most inappropriate sort of mercy that she will insist on, rely on, when it really is irrelevant. I'm afraid she shall get the worst of her parents… but she'd have me to thank for pretty hair."

The wood was still, now. The wind had gone.

"And she's all mine."

Ëonna's voice had dwindled to merely a breath, and Ashalle looked up from the child to find her friend in tears. Ashalle's heart froze, for she did not find elation, nor awe, nor simple relief. They were the tears of grief—a deeply rooted sort of grief of calm waters that hid a thrashing underneath.

"Mine. _Mine_," she shuddered.

Though unsaid, Ashalle understood the echoes of the lamentation. _No longer ours_.

Ashalle crawled over and knelt before them; she touched her forehead to her friend's and put a hand to the child's brow.

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They stayed that way for a long time. Through the heightening waves of Ëonna's sobs and the child's growing annoyance at her mother's heaving breast, the Healer had moved to sit aside the mother and tucked the grieving head under her own chin.

There had been no outburst of this sort when news first came of Teren's demise. Of course, Ëonna had likely expected it when she escaped the scuffle with her life and their unborn child, leaving her husband to fend off the bandits as he pleaded that she run. What must that have been like, to will your feet against your heart's cry? To cross the threshold where his voice no longer carried?

The morning after she had stumbled into camp crying for aide, the clan hunters returned with his corpse.

It was never voiced, but many in the tribe blamed the newly widowed outsider. They blamed the loss of their prodigy and beloved young Keeper to her seduction and troubling origins. Ëonna had taken these silent accusations (not to mention her own loss) with an alarming sort of calm, deeply worrying Ashalle for a long time. For as far as she'd seen, Ëonna did not mourn.

Their previous Keeper resumed the mantle. Marethari, true to her nature, was kindly and attentive, diffusing any tensions around the expectant mother before they escalated and regularly checking on her health. But she was... distant, and careful, never extending an offer of friendship to the widow. Teren had spent most of his youth with Marethari, and she'd seen him as her own son. Though Marethari did not blame Ëonna for his death, the Keeper must have seen in her his absence.

But Ashalle felt differently. She did not know what endeared herself to this "outsider." She dearly missed Teren, a good friend, but it was easy to see that Ëonna's longing was far greater. Perhaps it took the empathy of one who lived by the _Vir'Atishan._ Perhaps she had seen the bumbling side of her and never looked back. Nevertheless, Ëonna—to her—was never a stranger, though Ëonna herself had the tendency to act like one.

This thought brought her back to the present. She brushed the bangs from her friend's swollen eyes and asked, "Why did you did you leave? Why do this on your own? You frightened me so."

Ëonna righted her shirt again as her child finished. She baited one of the infant's hands with a finger; the little palm closed around it like a vice.

"I wanted to listen." She shrugged her free shoulder.

Ashalle frowned. "Listen for what?"

"The wind," Ëonna answered readily, turning twinkling eyes to her friend. Her lashes still spiked with tears, and she rubbed at them with a knuckle. "Teren was so gifted with the wind, I thought he might… want to say something."

Ashalle felt the need to stifle a groan; here was the secret language the two had always shared. "Might you have listened while I helped? Something could have gone horribly wrong."

"You'd have been nagging instructions at me, and I wouldn't _dream _of hearing the wind over that. Incidentally," she gestured at them both, "you came at the right time."

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It was near dusk when Ëonna finally complained of a cramp on her entire lower half, and wished to lie in a proper cot. Gingerly, she stood with much assistance from Ashalle, who cradled the child with an arm, and supported Ëonna with the other.

"New mothers should not be made to walk like this so soon after bodily trauma," she whined on the trail.

"You realize whose fault this is, do you not?" deadpanned Ashalle. She did her best not to jostle the sleeping baby so much, but doubling as a live crutch made the work difficult.

"Of course," Ëonna crowed. "Teren's, for thinking with the wrong part of his body."

Ashalle made a noise of disgust. Ëonna shakily bumped a hip to her friend's to soften the joke.

"Speaking of Teren," Ashalle went on, mostly to distract Ëonna from the heightening pain, "did he have much to say?"

"Dared to give me instructions—the cur—as if he would know." Ëonna rolled her eyes. "So he'd overseen all those birthings since becoming Keeper, never mind those in his training. Nevertheless, he shouldn't think to tell the mother of his own child what to do."

Yet, she smiled as though she didn't really mean this, and Ashalle (for the twelfth time that day) bit back her Healer's instinct to scold the woman for what she'd done alone. She supposed Ëonna herself would deny being alone.

It soon became apparent that Ëonna's insistence on walking back to camp was to be a failed affair. She grew paler, and paler, with every step. Ashalle would never have allowed anyone to walk at all so soon after that ordeal, but the forest was dangerous for anyone out alone. Bears, wolves, and boars abounded, there was always the risk of bandits and unsavory characters seeking refuge in the shadows, and spirits roamed, both bound and free. The Forest itself was alive in the night, its more sinister self seeking souls to enthrall. But the one who insisted was Ëonna herself, whose determination went a remarkably long way; it was the same determination, after all, that brought a heavy, expectant mother about half a league from camp to bear a child alone.

Yet it seemed even this was not enough. Her steps wobbled and faltered altogether, her hitching breaths becoming painful even for Ashalle to hear.

Finally, she stooped over a sapling on the side of the path and heaved.

"There goes everything else that was in there," she mumbled, weakly rubbing her belly. She seemed to glow a sickly white in the gathering dusk.

Ashalle patted her friend's back, thinking. Things did not bode well, as they had not been hearing any calls, which meant that the clan's search had likely moved to the west of camp, far and away from them. Ashalle herself had not been allowed in the search when it was discovered Teren's widow was missing, but a strong instinct told her where Ëonna would go. In her haste, she fled, telling no one where she went.

_Birds of the same feather…_ she thought bitterly, looking at the sick elf. _I, too, am a fool._

Ëonna peered over her shoulder, still breathing heavily. "Go. With her. Back to camp."

"Has the Dread Wolf stolen your wits? I cannot leave you here!"

Ëonna swallowed. Then, she smirked. "Pregnant or not, I have been stuck in the forest crippled and alone before." She patted the knife at her side. "I _am_ a hunter: I don't only hunt, I hide very damn well, too."

Ashalle bit her lip. Truly, there was no other way; Ashalle knew nothing of weapons, and the babe would only hinder or reveal her mother if trouble came along. It was better to put her in the clan's protection, and right away. She slowly nodded her assent.

She stayed long as she could, helping to find her friend a cavity in a charred, lightning-split cedar. She arranged fallen branches around the entrance, praying that it was enough to give passersby no reason to investigate.

As the Healer worked, Ëonna held her daughter within the shelter. She smelled the fragrant head, traced fringed eyelids, and nudged her smallest finger against a nostril. It was too big to fit. She stretched out the curl of tiny, pudgy fingers, and kissed the little mouth. She whispered words to faintly pointed ears.

When Ashalle had finished, Ëonna handed the babe to her through a gap in the branches, hands steady. With the child in her arms, Ashalle leveled her face to the gap, though in the waning light she saw nothing of her friend.

"We will come back for you," she said, voice strangely pleading. "Perhaps not when this night falls, but on the morrow. Please…"

She didn't know what she was asking for. She thought to say _take care of yourself_, but it felt like something else.

Ëonna nodded anyway, unseen. "I will."

Ashalle stalled for a moment by adjusting some perceived flaw in the concealment. She was turning to leave when she remembered something. "Her True Name…" she whispered.

"Lyna, as was mine when my mother bore me. She carries it now." Ëonna paused, as though hesitating on a revelation, before teetering forward. "I would like to request a Cloak Name for her on behalf of the clan."

"Say it."

"_Rirrys_," Ëonna declared, clear and unwavering. "Like the sound of the wind in the trees."

Ashalle glanced down at the sleeping infant. The strange name seemed to echo somehow, in a hollow in her chest. Even then, she knew it would be so.

"An instruction from Teren, I gather?" she asked with a smirk.

Behind a cover of branches came the muffled, bell-like laugh. "He dared to tell the mother of his child what to do."

Above, the wind blew. Ashalle left.

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Ashalle feared intersecting with dangerous animals or humans on her flight back to camp, but she encountered none of those. She walked to the nearest fire exhausted, slightly spooked, but unharmed. Little Rirrys was sleeping better than ever, even through the excited hoots of the first clan mates who greeted them.

Marethari calmly took charge after this new development, nudging aside the gathering throng and instructing midwives to see to the child. Ashalle begrudgingly handed her over. A hooting whistle recalled searchers from the wood, just as the darkness truly hit. The night sky was lit only by a swathe of stars as blazing campfires held the murk of the trees at bay.

Ashalle looked on at her clan, her family. Her parents were not among them, who had died of illness many years ago. No brothers or sisters fussed about the tent holding the newly arrived babe, except for kin of a different bond. She knew all of their names, their younger selves, the hands of the clan, the feet of the clan, the eyes of the clan. Coming back into the fold felt like a welcoming, like the embrace of water around parched gills, and all here knew that feeling and did not chasten her for fleeing. All here knew she would return.

She looked back at the trail she had come from, shrouded in darkness. She looked past the reach of firelight, past the trees, gaze touching a figure huddled in the ink of night and waiting for the dawn. Marethari announced that they would set out for her in first light.

For a moment, a fear surfaced in Ashalle that harm to Ëonna (in the form of predators or those wretched bandits) would not wait for light.

A gripping terror arose that Ëonna herself would not wait for light.

She quelled these fears and prayed:

_Mythal, I beseech. Cloak your child._

_Sylaise, I ask. Guide her to your hearth._

(As it turned out, her fears would be realized in the morning, in the empty shelter of the charred tree. Until then, she would sleep fitfully, dreaming of blood and stained linens.)


End file.
